The root of all banality.

People can get a little funny when it comes to money issues?especially questions of where it comes from and who (apart from them) ends up with it. And by "funny," I mean "stupid."

Here's a fr'instance. I spent a good deal of my early adult life scratching for everything I got, scrabbling for the rent and the beer and the occasional meal. It's not an uncommon story at all in this town. And as a lot of us have discovered, you learn to adapt quick in a situation like that.

Then, while in my mid-30s, a few things came together quite by happenstance, and worked out okay. Things were suddenly, if not exactly what you'd call "glorious," well, at least a little nicer. I got bounced from my job as a receptionist here at the paper (having that job itself was a good thing) to a staff writing gig. There was no pay increase involved, but it was still a good thing. I was starting to lose my nut at that front desk. On top of that, around the same time a publisher released a book of mine. A couple others followed.

I think that's what did it. None of it made me anything close to a wealthy man?far from it?but that didn't seem to matter to people.

A friend of mine told me, right around the time all this was happening, "As soon as people think you've made it, they show up with their hands out."

I knew he'd run into that sort of thing, but I had serious doubts that anything like that would happen in my case.

"People know better," I thought.

Sure enough, though, within a short matter of months after that first book came out, cousins I hadn't seen in 30 years, half-cousins I'd never even heard of, the children of those half-cousins started sending me things?notices for weddings and graduations taking place in small Midwestern towns. I was very confused by all this, and didn't make the connection until I noted that nearly each one was accompanied by a hand-written note that read, in essence, "If you can't make it, a cash gift is just fine."

(After none of them received a cash gift, I guess word got around, and the invites stopped arriving.)

Even people who didn't come right out and ask for money started acting like I was suddenly rolling in it. There were comments. I started getting attitude from people I used to work with years ago. One fellow stopped me on the street while I was running some Saturday-morning errands and said, "Gee, I bet people would be really surprised to learn that you still carry your own groceries."

"What the fuck's that all about?" I thought. I didn't know at first if it was a blind comment or a money comment. I assumed it was the latter, just from the context of the conversation?and that made even less sense than the former would have. I almost told him, "Yeah, hard as it is to believe, I not only still carry my own groceries, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays? When the butler's off? I even have to scrub my own ass." But I held my tongue.

Things had become incredibly stupid?who in their right mind would think that writing books is any way at all to make a decent living?

Well, I suppose the newspapers don't help much, when a couple times a year you see stories about someone receiving a $4- or $5-million advance or more. As I've tried to explain to people, that sort of money gets handed out once or twice a year (and usually to someone who doesn't need it). Yet at the same time, there are hundreds upon hundreds of new books hitting the stores every single month. Most of those people you see?the people whose names appear on the covers of those books?got paid a pittance for what they produced.

Something else I've tried to explain to people: I have, in every instance, chosen quite consciously to take very small advances?smaller than most, even?and I've done so for a reason. An advance is just what it sounds like?you are expected to pay that money back via a small percentage of each sale. If you don't earn back all that advance money for your publisher, you get no royalties down the line. More importantly, if you don't earn out, you won't be asked to write another book. Most of these folks you see getting paid million- and multimillion-dollar advances will likely never write anything else. At least not for a major publisher?or for that kind of money. Of course, maybe they only had that one book in them, and then fine, it's a perfectly delightful scam. But for the rest of us who'd like to keep doing this sort of thing for a while (if only because we have no other viable skills), knowing full well (in my case at least) that we're never going to be hitting any bestseller lists anytime soon, a huge advance like that would be the kiss of death.

I've managed to work out a very pleasant little system through which I may never become wealthy, but, with luck, I'll always have something to do. That's the important thing. While I may in fact finally be making a little more than the $35 a week I was paid to write "Slackjaw" those first five or six years, my last royalty check (I get two a year) was for $75. Woo-hoo! The one before that was a lot less. That's why I keep the day job here at the Press.

(Another funny thing about advances and royalties?they're considered freelance income, so come tax time, you have to send half of everything back anyway.)

I don't bring any of these things up to complain about them. Far from it. It would be foolish and horrible for me to complain about something like that. If a lot of money was what I wanted out of life, I would've gone into some other more lucrative line of work, like furnace repair or candle dripping. I see those ads on the subway. As it stands, I'm quite satisfied right now with the way things've worked out. Not that there aren't a few things I might like to purchase some day, and it's not like I'll turn down money?Christ, I'm neither stupid nor a communist.

It's just that when you get right down to it, money's always kind of annoyed me. One way or another, it's always been a pain in the ass. People who talk too much about money annoy me, too. I just don't want to have to think about it. Those years when I had none, I didn't worry about it because there was nothing there to worry about. I knew the rent would take some scrabbling, so I scrabbled when I needed to, I took care of it, and then I forgot about it again until the next time. Now that I don't worry about the rent so much, I hardly think about money at all.

This drives the guy who does my taxes a little nuts. Every year I drop the paperwork on his desk (I won't touch it myself), and then he yells at me for not taking deductions, for not doing this or that. But I have nothing I can deduct, really, unless beer, coffee and smokes can be figured in (I've asked?they can't). I just want to get into his office and out of it again as quickly as possible, write the damn checks, then forget about things for another year.

I see ominous, boring commercials on the television about retirement plans and golden years and projects and schemes and investment packages and other things I don't care to understand, but once you're stuck in this job, you're stuck in this job. There is no retirement to consider (unless you're Stephen King). Me, I got no such plans, except to wait and see what happens next.

I realize (sometimes I really, really do) that thinking that way is foolish. You never know what might happen, right? Well, I guess that's sort of the point. You never do know what's going to happen. You can plan and fret and scrimp and save and squirrel away all you want, and something might come along that'll make it all a complete waste of time, suck it all away, reduce it to dust. A slip of the tongue, a foot that misses the brake, an act of God, a doctor's creased forehead. Myself, I'd rather be comfortable with what I've got now, not fret over how I'm going to gather enough to be comfortable with it in the future. I don't need much. So long as I can feed the cats (make that cat) and keep some beer in the fridge and smokes on the table, maybe go out every once in a while, well, that's okay.

I'm 38 years old. I still eat my dinner while sitting on the living room floor. Maybe one of these days I'll grow up and start taking some of these things more seriously, but I sure hope not.

What was my point again?